Tarkov Season 1
Season 1
Kord Breach
August 3, 2026 · patch 1.1.0.0
Kord Breach is Escape from Tarkov’s first season: a separate, opt-in character that starts fresh, running under a ruleset you pick yourself and cannot change afterwards. Your permanent PMC, stash, hideout and Kappa are untouched by all of it, whether you play the season or skip it entirely.
New to the whole idea? Start with how Tarkov seasons work.
Looking for a modifiers planner? Start with the Kord Breach season planner.
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No. Your permanent account is not touched, not while the season runs and not when it ends.
If you never create a seasonal character, nothing happens to you at all.
The part usually left out is the rewards. Seasonal rewards unlock permanently across every character you own, seasonal and permanent, and Season 1’s include trade offers for Black Division equipment. A trade offer is a permanent gameplay unlock on your main, not a cosmetic.
So nothing is taken from you if you skip it, but something becomes unavailable to you afterwards. If you care about having full trader access on your main account, that is the real cost of sitting a season out, and it is worth knowing before you decide rather than after.
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Six modifiers apply to every seasonal character automatically. You cannot turn them off, they cost nothing, and together they set the baseline that every modifier you do choose is measured against. Two pairs of them decide how the season actually plays.
Early raids are expensive to lose
No Insurance + Armor Shortage
Nothing comes back, and the traders are short of armour to replace it with. A kit lost at level 5 costs more than the same kit lost on your main, and it is harder to rebuild.
The hideout is the money engine
Handyman + No FIR for Hideout
Crafting runs at half the time with the skill starting at 51, and hideout zones do not need Found in Raid items. On a seasonal character the hideout earns, not the trader.
The remaining two are the season’s flavour and its catch-up. Black Division puts operatives on specific locations to hunt, and Seasoned PMCs pays 25% more raid experience, so starting fresh is not starting from nothing.
Applied automatically · no point cost · cannot be turned off
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Beyond the globals you choose your own. Everyone starts on 0 points. Negative modifiers pay you points, positive modifiers spend them, and your balance can never drop below zero, so every upside on your character is bought with a downside you agreed to live with.
The trades are not symmetrical. Kappa Protocol, which removes the Collector requirement grind, costs a large slice of the budget on its own, while a negative like Osteoporosis pays well precisely because it is punishing in the raids where it matters. Some pairs cancel each other out, and at least one pair cannot be taken together at all.
The picks are locked for the season with no respec, so it is worth working out the whole build before you confirm the first line of it.
Kord Breach planner
If you are looking for a build rather than an explanation, that is what the planner is for.
All 30 modifiers with their point costs, the balance worked out as you pick, and the conflicts flagged before you commit. Free, no account, and the build lives in the link so you can share it.
Open the Kord Breach planner05
This is the part most coverage gets wrong by omission. You earn these by hitting level milestones or completing the seasonal task line, and once earned they are permanently available on every character you own, so they are confined neither to the season nor to cosmetics.
Confirmed unless marked
The full picture of what moves in, out and never applies to every season, not just this one.
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Arena feeds the seasonal character in several directions at once, and almost nothing flows back out. These are the four that change what you do on day one.
Confirmed unless marked
How the rest of it moves, including currency limits, Ref reputation, the Ref tasks that are unavailable in-season and tactical clothing syncing both ways, is set out on the seasons hub. None of it is specific to Kord Breach.
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Kord Breach shipped inside a large patch, and several of these changes reshape the season more than some modifiers do.
In the season
There is none. You cannot insure anything, at any price.
Everywhere else
It got better. Insured items return faster at a slightly higher cost, and Jaeger gained his own service: significantly more expensive, but returns lost items within a couple of hours.
The two are constantly conflated, which is why they are set side by side. The contrast is deliberate: insurance improved everywhere except the one mode where it does not exist.
Most side tasks have been removed from the Collector requirements, leaving only a handful such as A Shooter Born In Heaven. The new gate is loyalty level 4 with all traders plus a separate Fence reputation threshold.
Earning Kappa under the new rules grants a new achievement. The old Kappa Path achievement is now permanently unobtainable, which is why it has disappeared from profiles that had not already earned it.
Kappa Path is obtainable only up to the start of Season 1 on 3 August 2026. It is listed here because that deadline is easy to miss, and because it explains where the achievement went for anyone who does not earn it in time.
Most side tasks no longer unlock in chains. They are tied to trader loyalty level instead: LL1 offers a basic set, completing several of them advances you, and each loyalty level unlocks harder tasks. Rewards skew towards cash and away from barter items and equipment.
Most trade offers now unlock on reaching a loyalty level rather than by completing one specific task, with the Tri-Zip backpack at Ragman LL3 and the DevTac Ronin at Mechanic LL2 given as examples. Some chain tasks remain as exceptions, and those show their key rewards when you accept the first task in the chain.
Entry-level ammo is available much earlier, with 7.62x39 T-45M1 purchasable from Prapor from the start. Character level requirements for the earlier trader loyalty levels are reduced, and the total trade volume requirement is removed entirely. Initial hideout construction is faster, with fewer dependencies on other modules and on Found in Raid items.
Global 1.1.0 change
Reduced Found in Raid dependency for the hideout, in every mode.
The season’s own modifier
No FIR for Hideout removes the requirement entirely, stacking on top of the global change.
Easy to conflate, and routinely conflated. They are two separate effects, and inside the season you get both.
You can watch your squadmates after you die and cycle between their cameras. It is not a kill cam: you cannot see your killer’s view, and it only works while someone on your team is still alive.
Labs raid time is reported to extend to 30 minutes in PvP and 35 in PvE.
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Listed rather than guessed at. Every one of these is something this page will answer the day BSG does. Questions about the modifier values themselves are tracked on the planner.
Every line below is open · nobody has answered any of them
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Kord Breach runs from 3 August 2026, shipping with patch 1.1.0.0. Nikita confirmed that date on 27 July after a delay from the original late-July target. BSG named the day but never an hour, so the exact launch time was not published in advance.
BSG has not announced an end date. A season timer in a screenshot of an internal build showed 74 days, which is where that number online comes from, but a build screenshot is not a commitment. We do not publish an end date until BSG states one.
No. A seasonal character is entirely separate from your permanent PvP and PvE profiles. Your PMC, stash, hideout, trader progress and Kappa are untouched while the season runs and when it ends, whether or not you create a seasonal character.
No, and skipping it takes nothing away from your account. It does mean the season’s rewards stay unearned, and those include trade offers for Black Division equipment that unlock permanently on your main. That is the one real cost of sitting the season out.
No. Nikita has stated that modifier picks are locked for the entire season, and there is no respec. Everyone starts on 0 points, negatives pay in, positives spend, and the balance can never go below zero. Plan the whole build before confirming it.
Yes. BSG has stated that rewards earned by hitting level milestones or completing the seasonal task line become permanently available to all of your characters, seasonal and permanent. For Season 1 that includes trade offers for Black Division equipment, not only cosmetic items.
No. No Insurance is one of the six global modifiers applied automatically to every seasonal character, so nothing can be insured before a raid. Outside the season insurance actually improved in 1.1.0, including a new faster Jaeger service, which makes the contrast easy to misread.
All six: No Insurance, Black Division, No FIR for Hideout, Armor Shortage, Handyman and Seasoned PMCs. They cost no points, they apply to every seasonal character regardless of what you pick, and they are separate from the 30 modifiers you choose between yourself.
The Collector requirements were reworked in 1.1.0: most side tasks are gone, and the gate is now loyalty level 4 with all traders plus a Fence reputation threshold. Whether the new Kappa achievement carries back to your permanent account is not confirmed.
Yes. XP and skill XP transfer in, trader reputation is linked through Ref, and currency, GP coins, Lego medals and supply crates transfer once you have completed Jack of All Trades, at lower limits than standard PvP. Transfers out of the season are not supported.
Yes, and it is not really the Kord Breach battle pass. The Battle Pass ships alongside the season but runs in Seasonal, PvP and PvE with progression shared between them, so it is a patch feature rather than a season one. Every reward on it is earnable through normal gameplay.
No. Prestige is not obtainable on a seasonal character. It remains available on permanent PvP, and the separate PvE Prestige system has been announced but has not shipped, so permanent PvP is currently the only mode where you can prestige at all.
It resets. The character, its stash and its progression do not carry forward into the next season or into your permanent account. Anything you unlocked as a reward does carry, including the Black Division trade offers, and stays available on every character you own.
Facts on this page come from Battlestate Games’ official season posts, the 1.1.0.0 patch notes and direct statements by Nikita Buyanov. Anything a community source reported without official confirmation is labelled Reported, and anything nobody has answered is listed under open questions rather than guessed at. A Q&A attributed to Nikita that circulated in late July was publicly denied by him, and nothing from it appears here. Fan project, not affiliated with Battlestate Games.
